One

The raft was there. It had been hauled to the beach and now drifted in the shallows, anchored with mooring irons, a great white standard whipping around on a mast rising from its centre. People were already on board. The raft seemed to hang a few feet above the ground like a disc of shadow. The people appeared to float in mid-air. It was a disconcerting, disorientating sight. Jane could not be excited by it. Becky too seemed to hang back, despite the howling conflict at her shoulder. He knew that designers and tradesmen had grafted hard over that vehicle for months, but it seemed too flimsy for the water it rested upon. They found themselves approaching it almost against their will; their hearts eager to fling themselves into the void even as their minds threw up all manner of warning signs.

Again Jane was distracted by some subtler movement than that going on across Romney Marsh and the weatherboard cottages along the Dungeness Road. He peered into the shadows and thought he could see the flicker of blue and white stripes; a small body struggling against the tide of inhumanity, a shuttle in some ghastly loom.

'Stanley?' he called out.

'This way, Richard,' Becky said. Her arm was around him. Suddenly he was aware of how terrible he felt. It was as if the fire and smoke, the sand in his throat and the awful mealy smell of bodies strewn across the beach had taken him out of himself to the point where he was unaware of what he was feeling. Even the agony of his shoulder had gone away to some extent, had some distance about it, as if it was remembered – or imagined.

He had to rest by a coil of chain that rose up from the shingle like some weird snake. To his left, a giant anchor had lost its shape to the creep of oxidant. Machinery emerged from or immersed itself into the beach, metalwork so large it might have some sway over how the world turned. Jane thought he could hear the spit and crackle of static barking from the radios in a fishing-boat wheelhouse but it was his unsteady feet on the chips of stone.

'Stanley,' he gasped, trying to focus on Becky's features. She leant down towards him and the face he had fallen in love with found clarity. It was stippled with sweat that clung like small beads to skin greased with diesel. Her eyes were wide and brimful of concern. She kissed Jane and held him. 'We're close,' she said, but he didn't know if she meant their relationship, or their proximity to some kind of end. 'Don't leave me now.'

'I saw Stanley,' he said. The boy's name was like a living thing on his tongue. It reanimated him. He hurried Becky towards the raft. Someone was blowing a horn. Fighting was breaking out at the water's edge. People were being dragged off the raft, or pushed on. Human chains clung to it, desperate to be a part of this maiden voyage.

'They're going to leave.' She sounded panicky; relieved.

'Not without you,' he said. 'I promise.'

They splashed through the surf, Jane grimacing inwardly at the warm, viscous beat of the tide against his legs. Someone swung an arm his way; he pushed Becky to one side and ducked. His attacker bowled over into the water and was lost under dozens of thrashing limbs. Jane didn't see him resurface. They kept being repulsed at moments when it seemed he might get Becky onto the raft. Her boots squealed against its lip – 'Hook a leg on!' – but others scrambled over her, causing her to cry out as her knee threatened to bend the wrong way. She tumbled back against him, her head dipping under the waves. He bent to retrieve her and almost lost his footing as more people charged into him. He felt himself crushed against the edge of the raft, and it, drawn by the tide, was dragging up the shingle, rising out of the sea. Screams from the far edge of the raft. He imagined people tipping off the end. The balance was screwed. It was going to come ramming down on his head and that would be that. Something would have to give and Jane saw it would have to be him. He sucked in his breath and ducked underwater. He had not let go of Becky and could feel her thrashing beneath his fist. The raft came back down and jerked to the right. The hull tore into his back and he cried out. Panic leapt around inside him as he sought the surface again, but the raft had slid across his exit routes.

He readjusted his grip on Becky, and on his dread, and struck out deeper, away from shore and the forest of legs blocking his progress. He turned left and kicked. Feeling above him with his free hand for the edge of the raft. He thought it might never come, but it did, and he hauled Becky coughing and spluttering from the water. It filmed his eyes like oil; he could feel it in his mouth like the residue of a pastry saturated with lard. They were both sick as they splashed from the water, around fifteen yards away from the worst of the squabbling. People were dying. Jane shouted at them, an incoherent bellow of anger and frustration.